January 10, 2012

I've been making this almost weekly for about 8 months. And we still aren't sick of it. Usually I double the recipe. Even then it's goes really fast around here. Not one person in my family doesn't love adore this stuff.

We eat it for lunch. We eat it for dinner. We eat it for a snack. I've even eaten it for breakfast a time or two. We eat it hot. We eat it cold. We eat it room temp. You get the idea...

This recipe was inspired by Health Bent'sPork Fried Rice...but this is the way that I make it. I'm giving you the proportions for a "single" batch. Then, if you like it as much as we do, you can double it next time. (Don't pay attention to the number of each food ingredients in the pic below...I was doubling a batch but not all of my eggs are there...I think they began to roll off my hutch at that point.)

The trickiest part of this whole thing is the mess that it makes preparing it. A food processor is almost mandatory since it cuts out so much work. I've also found that if I use one big saute pan (or wok) and one huge serving bowl to transfer the "fried" ingredients to; it helps to minimize the mess. You've got to work in batches with this one.

Ingredients1/2 lb. smoked link sausage or ground pork (I try to stretch our meat consumption around here...you can do a one whole pound of meat. It sure is delicious...but I'd rather use the other 1/2 lb for breakfast the next couple mornings in our eggs. We don't seem to really notice much of a difference.)1 onion, diced4 large carrots, diced1 large head of cauliflower or 2 medium (regular) sized (The ones in the picture are LARGE!)2 T coconut aminos1 1/2 T chili garlic sauce (You can adjust the spice on this...start out with teaspoons and if it's not too hot for you...move to Tablespoons. It doesn't seem to bother my kids, but they've grown up eating "spicy" foods.)6-8 eggscoconut oil for frying

Begin by browning the pork. If you use smoked link sausage, cut in about 6 pieces and throw it in the food processor to get nice crumbles. (The kind I buy is fully cooked, so I don't have to worry about cleaning the raw meat out...but I'll still brown it in the skillet like normal until it's nice and caramelized.) While the pork is browning, you can get to work on prepping all the veggies.

Put onion (remove peel and cut in quarters) and carrots (remove stems and cut in thirds) in food processor until finely diced. When pork is done, pour it in your large (HUGE if you're doubling this) serving bowl. Depending on how fatty my pork was, I may add a little coconut oil to the pan, if there's not enough grease to the pan and saute the carrots and onions until carrots are a dark orange (you want them all the way cooked) and until onions are translucent. (Go prep your cauliflower while this is cooking.) Add 1/2 T of garlic chili sauce (or teaspoon, if you don't want the kick!) to your onion carrot mixture and 1 T of coconut aminos. Dump in serving bowl when done.

"Rice" a head of raw cauliflower: Remove stems and leaves, and chop the florets into chunks. Add to food processor and pulse until it looks like rice. (I find it much easier to pulverize the cauliflower in several batches. It's less messy AND I have better control over the consistency. I like mine to look like large feta cheese crumbles....any smaller and I think it gets too mushy.) I usually set my processor on a 2-3 (out of 6) and pulverize away.

Add coconut oil to your hot pan and fry that riced cauliflower. This may take about 10 minutes or so. Just stir every couple minutes and add 1T of coconut aminos and 1T (or teaspoon) of garlic chili sauce. When you think it's done, taste a little bit...if it still tastes cauliflower-y then cook it a little longer until it doesn't taste like much (kinda like rice.) When it's done, dump it in your serving bowl. You're almost done.

Turn down the heat just a bit and scramble those eggs. Dump into serving bowl and give it a good mix until all the ingredients are well-combined.

It's ready...be prepared that this may disappear way quicker than it just took you to make all of that big heaping pile of fried "rice".

January 5, 2012

...or Beanless Chili...whatever you want to call it. Need a sneaky way to add more veggies to your family's diet? This is your recipe.

The inspiration to substitute the veggies for the beans came from this recipe, but I adapted it to fit my family's favorite "Kramer Chili" recipe. And...they didn't even notice, or at least mention, that it was missing the legumes. In fact, my boys (the big one and the almost 5 year old one) each had two bowl-fulls.

In a large pot, brown ground beef. While beef is browning, throw onion, green pepper, and jalapeno in a food process and pulverize. Add the veggies to the pot with meat and let them cook for a few minutes. Add seasonings. Stir in all remaining ingredients (except butternut squash and zucchini...if you're using sweet potatoes instead of squash put it in now since they take longer to cook). Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 45 minutes.

Why I blog...

I'm often tempted to fall snare to the thief, Discontentment, (at least in my heart) about the complications of raising these precious little people...or that same thief with a different name, Comparison, as I'm sometimes overly concerned about dressing as stylish or keeping my house as neat as I once did before having them. So, this blog is simply a form of celebration-as I document, remember, and process--the gloriously messy, often chaotic, exceptionally silly and undeniably full household that God has given us. Though it may not always accurately represent all of our "real" life...these are the moments I want to store away, along with the details of the redemptive work of Jesus in our family that I want recorded for my children one day.